


i could say that i like you

by elliebell (Naladot)



Category: Day6 (Band), Wonder Girls
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Awkward Romance, Bullying, Crushes, F/M, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:19:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21567220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/elliebell
Summary: Hey!” she says. “Are you going to Jackson’s party?”“Are you going?” he asks, unable to think of anything else to say.“I’ll go if you go?” she says.Another plot twist. Jae blinks back at her. “Oh. Okay?”How two outcasts find their way to each other.
Relationships: Park Jaehyung | Jae/Woo Hyerim | Lim
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	i could say that i like you

**Author's Note:**

> “Deep In Love” made me want to write a fic that felt like a John Hughes movie, which is also why this is set vaguely in the U.S. I have no real reason for why it’s set in the mid-2000s except that Jae is my millennial fave.
> 
> Warning for bullying.

* * *

  
  
  


According to all the movies, television shows, and rambling middle-aged dads who talk at Jae when he’s working register at his after-school grocery store job, high school should be the time of your life. The glory of your youth. The reference point for all the stories you tell to your future grandchildren. Unfortunately, Jae’s stories will all be really lame, like, _ the best part of senior year was that I got off-campus lunch and didn’t have to sit by myself in the cafeteria anymore, _ which is to say, his future grandchildren are going to leave some negative reviews about the lack of plot and unlikability of the central character. Definitely not getting a fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Jae?”

He looks up from where he’s been staring at the cash register and finds one of his classmates, Hyerim, on the other side of the conveyor belt. She’s pretty and nice and therefore his zoned-out social fumble seems all the worse.

“Hey, yeah, sorry.” He starts scanning her groceries and goes too fast, sending a box of granola bars sprawling down to the end of the checkout counter. They both watch it hit the end and bounce back.

“That’s okay,” she says, peeling her gaze away from the box and back to him. “It’s always hard to go to work after school.”

“Where do you work?” he asks, confused to find himself in this conversation, but responding on autopilot.

“Um,” she says. “The library?”

She says it with a question mark at the end, which strikes him as odd. “You don’t like it?” he asks.

Her nose crinkles as she shakes her head. “My friends say it’s killing my social life.”

He gives a shrug as he types in the code for her bag of apples. “Eh. We’re gone next year anyway, you know?”

“Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

He looks up. She’s got this little smile that makes her look more sad than anything, a clear indication that he has screwed up, but he doesn’t know what his mistake was or how to apologize.

She pays for her groceries with a twenty. “I’ll see you at school, Jae,” she says.

“It’s nice to see you,” he replies, which is formal and idiotic but she doesn’t seem to hear because she’s frowning at her pink Motorola Razr as she walks out the door. He’s lucky. Dodged a bullet. He considers saying something else, but before he can think of anything, another customer comes to his lane, and she’s already walking out the door.

  
  
  
  
  


The truth is, Jae doesn’t actually have friends.

He walks to his car after his shift, bundled in his coat and his teeth chattering. The sunset is a blazing orange, just visible over the square, squat roofs of the nondescript businesses surrounding the parking lot. He is nearly eighteen and he hasn’t had a real, close friend since Junhyeok moved away in the sixth grade—and he and Junhyeok weren’t exactly the best of buds, anyway, but it was something, and now he’s got next to nothing.

He joined the debate team this year partially hoping it would solve this problem (also because he’s a hell of a debater and might as well get class credit for it) but the team captain, Sungjin, is also the senior student body president and on the soccer team, so it’s debatable whether he hates Jae or just doesn’t have time. They’ve been in the same classes since Jae transferred to his current high school during his sophomore year (bullies, fresh start, not a story he’s keen on telling) but Jae is pretty sure they’ve never had a conversation. The other members of the debate team include a sophomore named Jinyoung, who actively hates Jae; his best friend Wonpil, who seems to be there only because Jinyoung is there; and a freshman named Nayeon, who confessed on her first day that she was only there to put it on her college applications but has since proved to be a surprisingly competent debater. The point is, though, that none of these people are inviting Jae out on a Friday night.

He reaches his car and looks up. In the car facing his, Hyerim sits illuminated by the glow of her phone. He looks just long enough to confirm it’s her—she must have left the store an hour ago—and then she looks up and waves. 

He waves back. Awkwardly. 

This should be the end of the story. But she goes rogue, and opens up the door of her car.

“Hey!” she says. “Are you going to Jackson’s party?”

Jae’s mind clicks forward as he tries to process this turn of events. Why is she talking to him, right now? But still, he has to chuckle at her question. “That loud sophomore?” he asks. “I guarantee you I am not on that invite list.”

She smiles and holds up her phone. “It’s not really an exclusive thing. Jackson’s a lot of things, but exclusive isn’t really one of them.”

Jae considers this for a second. What she’s presented him with is the possibility that he was never not invited to the various parties he overhears people talking about at school, but that he was so invisible that no one even had his number. “Are you going?” he asks, unable to think of anything else to say.

Her face goes blank and she stares at her phone for a half-second, then looks back at him again. “I’ll go if you go?” she says.

Another plot twist. Jae blinks back at her. “Oh. Okay?”

  
  
  
  
  


They drive to her house first, and then she hops into the passenger seat of Jae’s car, for reasons he didn’t quite follow—something about her parents and their rules for the car usage, and—anyway, it doesn’t matter if he can’t quite grasp someone else’s family dynamics, because he’s happy to drive. Hyerim gives him directions, perfectly timed, as they glide through the quiet neighborhood streets.

“So you and Jackson are friends?” he asks, for lack of anything better to say.

“Not exactly,” she replies. “I’m friends with Jaebum, who is friends with Jackson.”

Another soccer player. They’re well known at their school, solely because the soccer team is pretty decent and just about every other team sucks. Jae keeps up with sports, in a half-hearted attempt to maintain some vague sense of school spirit, and because his dad likes going to the basketball games and he and his dad don’t have all that much to talk about otherwise.

“You’re friends with Jaebum?” He’s never really seen Jaebum do much more than glower at people in the hallway, but there could be some redeeming qualities to the guy. Somewhere.

“We did gymnastics together in elementary school,” she says. “I kept doing it up until last year, but he switched to dance in middle school.”

Jae doesn’t actually know what to do with that information. Hyerim doing gymnastics he can imagine—a little too easily, if he’s being honest, and he shuts that thought down real quick because he might be weird but he’s not a creep—but Jaebum, even kid Jaebum, seems like an impossible addition to a gymnastics class. If he hadn’t actually _ seen _ Jaebum dance, he wouldn’t have believed that, either. People are real mysteries.

“Did you know I used to be on the cheerleading team?” Hyerim asks, and he tries not to look to grateful for her continuing the conversation unaided. “Freshman year. You came sophomore year, right?”

He hadn’t realized that Hyerim had noticed a detail like that. The other kids in their grade certainly didn’t seem to know when he arrived, if they cared enough to notice him at all. “Yeah, sophomore year. And I didn’t know that.”

This was partially why he’d always liked Hyerim—they weren’t friends, but she’d been his lab partner in chemistry for a whole quarter and always said hi to him between classes even though they didn’t have any friends in common. She was very, very nice, and that seemed to remain true no matter who she was with.

“My friend Sunye was the captain then,” Hyerim explained. “She recruited me, but then she graduated. Then my best friend Jia was the captain the next year, but that kind of turned into a disaster, and I quit in the summer because my parents were worried about my grades, and Sohee definitely did not like that I was on the team. So it was easier just to leave.”

She sounds really sad about this. Jae knows Sohee well enough—she’s quite popular despite being one of the quietest people in their grade, but she’s also sort of scary. “Aren’t you and Sunmi friends?” he asks.

“Yes,” Hyerim answers. “But Sunmi and Sohee are _ best _ friends.”

“That’s kind of bullshit,” Jae offers.

Hyerim sighs. “It’s fine.”

He glances over at her, and she’s frowning out the window. “High school is just high school,” he says. “We’re graduating soon, and then we get to reinvent ourselves, ya know? Be anything we want.”

Her lips twist into a smile.

“We’re here,” she says.

  
  
  
  
  
  


Jackson Wang lives, predictably, in a mini-mansion on the north side of town. Cars line the driveway and the road, but otherwise nothing suggests a party is happening inside. Jae kind of expected a scene out of a high school movie, and he’s a little disappointed, if he’s being honest.

“There’s a basement,” Hyerim says as they climb out of the car.

He locks the car and starts to head toward the front of the house, throat closing up in a swell of anxiety. In school, he’s not bullied so much as ignored. Just an insignificant person, on occasion shoved into a locker, but he’s pretty sure that’s from a random, caveman compulsion toward violence than any issue with him personally. One time in physics Brian Kang called him “that tall kid in the back” and his whole lab group turned to look like they’d never heard of him before. He sits with Bernard at lunch and talks to Wonpil in Music II, but otherwise, he just drifts. And now he’s drifted right into a party.

Hyerim stops on the path and looks back at him. “Are you okay?” she asks.

Jae tells himself to play it cool. “I—” he says.

And then, as per usual, his executive functions fail and he starts saying all the things he told himself not to say. “I don’t really think this is my scene,” he says.

Her eyebrows lift slightly. “Not your scene?”

“Yeah. You know,” he shrugs. “High school parties, ya know? Just kind of lame…” He trails off, unsure of how to wrap up that thought in a way that salvages anything at all. He’s possibly the biggest idiot on the planet, congrats to him—maybe they give out awards for that.

“Jae,” she says. “I’m not friends with any of these people, either.”

Jae freezes. She’s just _ looking _ at him, and he’s staring back at her, another gold star in the dumbass awards. “It’s not—”

“I asked you to come here with me because you’ve always been nice to me,” she says. “And I didn’t want to come here alone.”

He reels on his feet, as though her words made physical impact with his chest. Why the hell would she pick him, of all people, as her party wingman? But she just said it—he’s always been nice, and that’s because she’s always been nice, and really this is a nice circle of niceness and all but—

“Hyerim,” he says. “You know they all hate me, right?”

She tilts her head and gives him a small smile. “They don’t hate you—”

“Right. Not hate, just—ignore. You know? And I’m not upset about it. Swear to God. I’m just.”

“Hurt?” she offers. “Yeah. Me too.”

He falls silent. The sound of bass thrumming somewhere in the distance wafts across the grass. Shit, she really is pretty. What the hell is he doing here?

“If you want,” she says slowly, “We don’t have to go in. We can just go somewhere—”

He considers this idea. Just driving away. “But you want to go,” he points out.

“Yeah,” she says with a shrug. “But that’s just proving a point to myself, is all.”

“What point?”

“That I won’t let them decide who I am for me?” She rolls her eyes, like this is a stupid thing to say, and gives him an embarrassed smile. “That’s so cheesy, I’m sorry—”

“Then let’s just go in and see,” he says.

  
  
  
  
  
  


If Hyerim weren’t walking next to him, Jae probably would have turned around before he ever got close to the door. But having her beside him gives him an unexpected, calm confidence, and he glances over to see if maybe she feels it, too. She looks up at him, and they simultaneously laugh and look away. 

He decides that’s a yes. He’s never really had an ally before.

Then she opens the door to the basement, and Jae feels that warm sense of confidence start to chill.

Tons of people stand within the doorway. Jae spots a few people he recognizes—Brian Kang at an air hockey table, playing a game against Mark Tuan, and Bernard Park singing karaoke at the far end of the room—but otherwise the place is a sea of faces whose names Jae has never learned. The sickly sweet scene of alcohol pervades the room, and Jae knows he’s a nerd because he immediately thinks _ crap I hope we don’t get busted for this. _

He feels Hyerim’s hand clamp down on his wrist, and when he looks at her, her carefree smile has faded and been replaced with a very frozen, fake smile. “Don’t ditch me,” she says, and looks up at him with pleading eyes.

“I won’t,” he says.

They push their way through the crowded room. Near the air hockey table, Sunmi has perched on top of a couch, where she’s laughing wildly at Jackson’s antics. A moment later Jae notices Sohee next to her, smiling with a vague look of disapproval. This is the direction Hyerim has aimed for, which seems like not the greatest goal to Jae—he’d much rather go over to where Wonpil has joined Bernard to sing a striking rendition of “I Want It That Way,” but he already promised Hyerim.

“Hey!” Sunmi yells as they approach, and immediately wraps Hyerim in a hug. “Oh my god,” she says, “you won’t believe—” And then, without finishing her thought, she falls onto the couch next to Sohee and starts laughing at a guy dancing, someone Jae thinks graduated a couple years ago, but can’t quite remember.

Hyerim glances back at him and shrugs, as if to apologize. They sit down on the end of the couch, close enough that Jae can smell her perfume intermingling with the smell of alcohol. The others in the group look like they’ve forgotten Hyerim is there. Maybe Jae should do something, but he can’t think of anything, and he’s already starting to get a headache.

Someone taps him on the shoulder. He looks up and it’s Sungjin, materialized out of thin air. “You wanna sing?” Sungjin asks, gesturing in the direction of the karaoke machine. Jae had briefly joined the choir during his sophomore year, but dropped out when one of the seniors made fun of his voice cracking.

Jae looks at Hyerim. “Go,” she says, smiling and waving him in Sungjin’s direction. 

Jae glances at the others, who are still laughing hysterically. “I can stay—”

“I’ll come find you,” she says, and shoos him in Sungjin’s direction again. So Jae, feeling weird, gets up and follows Sungjin through the crowd.

“So you and Hyerim?” Sungjin asks, grinning at Jae.

“No, it’s not like that,” Jae says quickly. “She just didn’t want to come here alone.”

“Uh-huh,” Sungjin says.

“Seriously.”

“Okay.” Sungjin holds his hands out, palms up. “Whatever you say.”

Jae rolls his eyes. But secretly, he enjoys the idea, and he keeps thinking about it as he takes the microphone from Bernard.

Sungjin chooses a Fall Out Boy track, and Jae starts in on the first line. He knows he can hit these notes, and as he looks around, he takes in the approving looks on everyone else’s faces. Hopefully, somewhere behind him, Hyerim is watching, too.

Sungjin takes the pre-chorus, and Jae sneaks another look around the circle that has formed. People are singing along and clapping—Jae has always felt more alive, more self-confident, in the world of music, and this feels good. Really good. He joins in on the chorus.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees someone pull out his phone, look at the screen, and show it to the girl next to him. They both laugh, and make eye contact with Jae.

Weird. He keeps singing.

Then the same thing happens again. And again. Wonpil pulls out his phone, frowns, and then backs out of the circle. Jae has the distinct feeling that people are laughing at him, but he keeps singing anyway.

They finish the song, and then Sungjin pulls out his phone and flips it open. Jae hands off the microphone to Bernard, who doesn’t make eye contact with him as he takes it.

“What the hell?” Sungjin says. “Who sent this?”

Jae glances over at Sungjin’s phone. There’s a grainy photo on the screen, but even though it’s small, Jae recognizes himself in the image. On impulse, Jae grabs the phone.

It’s a picture of him and Hyerim sitting on the couch on the other side of the room. At the top of the screen he can see a series of numbers, a mass text being sent from person to person at the party. The text below the image reads, _ if two nerds fuck do they expect a teacher to watch? _

Jae’s hands go numb and all the noise zeroes out. He stands there, staring at the text, blank.

“Jae?” someone says, distant.

He pushes the phone against Sungjin’s chest and then walks away, scanning the crowd for any sign of Hyerim. People look at him, snickering. “She’s outside!” someone calls out. He shoves his way through, and slams open the door.

It takes him several minutes to find Hyerim, but he finally spots her leaning against the hood of his car, shivering and staring at her phone.

“Parties, huh?” he says as he walks up, for lack of a better opening line. “Exciting…”

She just barely glances up at him, and he sees the glisten of tears in her eyes, but she looks back down immediately. “I, um. Texted my brother to see if he can pick me up.”

“I can take you—”

“No. It’s fine.”

Jae doesn’t know what to say. He’d been grateful for this unexpected outing. Curious about where it might lead. And it’s led him back to being a social zero.

Strangely, though, having clear proof of where he stands in the high school food chain makes him feel more calm. He looks up at the thin line of stars over head and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

“Look, Hyerim,” he says, turning back to her. “They’re idiots. Don’t listen to their bullshit. You’re so much better than that, and you always have been. So someone in that party is a dick—so what?”

She wipes a sleeve under her eye, smearing a bit of mascara off to the side. “It’s not that,” she says.

“Then what is it?” Jae asks, confused. _ He’d _been stung by that text, the way it left him feeling exposed, the butt of an unfunny joke. She didn’t deserve it, and it was only because of him that she’d received it.

“I brought you here—”

“It’s okay if you regret that.”

“_ No,” _ she groans and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I brought you here and exposed you to _ that.” _

“That’s their choice. And I don’t give a shit about their opinion—”

“I like you!” she bursts out.

For the second time in one evening, Jae freezes. His brain shuts down. He stares at her, dimly lit by a street light, her arms spread out and her eyes fixed on him.

“You—”

“I’ve liked you since we were lab partners,” she says quickly. “But I don’t know, I just—I was stupid, you know? And then I realized that all along you’ve been the only one to actually _ talk _ to me, and I—I don’t know. I caught a crush.”

“Caught a crush?” Jae repeats, dumbly.

“Yeah.” She gives him a small, uncertain smile.

Jae clears his throat. “Just to clarify,” he says, “a crush on _ me?” _

Her smile grows a little wider and she rolls her eyes. “Yes, you. And now,” she gestures in the direction of the house, “that I’ve let this happen, I know you’ll never want to be seen with me at school ever again.”

Unsure of how to reply to that, Jae follows her gaze back to the house. High school parties, even sans bullying text chains, have never seemed so unappealing.

He turns back to Hyerim again. “I know this is going to sound hella fake and weird but—do you want to go stargazing?”

  
  
  
  
  
  


This far out in the country, Jae can actually see the stars. Clear night, bright sky, like it popped right out of a song. He keeps the car on, rumbling into the night, and walks into the now-empty field, turning on his heels to make sure Hyerim has followed him out of the car. She has, looking at him with the twist of a smile just visible on her face as her footsteps crunch through the snow. He turns and traces a constellation with his finger. “Andromeda,” he says, and hands Hyerim the binoculars in his other hand. “Can you see it?”

She attempts, pressing the eye piece right up close so that it squishes into her eye sockets. He forgets what he’s doing. Watches the way she grips the binoculars, too tight, and then moves to push a strand of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

He lines up her gaze, careful not to invade too much of her space, even if he’s imagining exactly how it would go. He could swoop in for a kiss right now. But he doesn’t. Still, the party feels a hundred miles away, and they’re cocooned somehow in the chilly night air under the infinite expanse of stars. 

“It’s like a big fuzzy spot,” he says. He leans closer so he can squint at the right spot and taps the end of the binoculars. “There’s billions of stars in that spot.”

“Oh,” she says. “Oh my god.”

“I know,” he says, and smiles down at her.

  
  
  
  
  


They return to the warm car and sit there bundled in their coats. “So why exactly did you invite me to go to the party with you?” he asks, glancing over at Hyerim. 

“Impulse decision,” she says simply, and leans her elbow against the door of his car.

He lets out a light laugh. “Is that code for—”

“Jae,” she interrupts. “Are you going to kiss me, or not?”

He hadn’t actually considered making that a reality. For a split second he wonders if he’s on some sort of reality show, a really perverse kind of Punk’d , but she’s just looking at him. Waiting.

It’s awkward to move forward with his coat taking up so dammed much room, but he shifts anyway, leaning across the gap between the seats and into her space. His hand drifts up, brushing over her coat, and coming to rest against her cheek. It’s just like he imagined it, still feels like something he dreamed, her breath in time with his heartbeat and the soft sound of Christmas carols on the radio. He closes the gap, and their lips brush. She presses forward, and her lips are warm and soft against his.

He leans back a little, just enough to say into the space between them, “I like you, too.”

“Jae,” she says, and kisses him again, this time harder, opening her mouth into the kiss and flicking her tongue into his mouth. They’ve now entered into wildest dreams territory, and Jae—verified nerd, never been to a football game, hardly any friends on his MySpace page—is way out of his depth. But the only way to go is forward, so he kisses her back.

  
  
  
  
  
  


He drives into the school parking lot the next morning fairly certain that he dreamed the whole thing. There was no way in hell that he invited Hyerim to go stargazing after they became the targets of an unusually malicious text message chain. That’s the sort of chaos that can only happen in a dream.

He turns off his car and sits for a moment while watching his fellow students trudging through the snow in the parking lot. He wonders if the other kids are going to be talking about him and Hyerim, and if he’ll need to say something, and what he could possibly take to make these people shut up.

A tap on his window draws him out of his thoughts. He looks up and sees Hyerim smiling at him through the frosty glass. Somehow, none of it seems to matter as much, now.

He opens the door. “Hi,” he says.

“Hey.” She smiles and tucks her hair behind her ears, scanning the parking lot as a few more kids get out of their cars and look their way.

Maybe this is the return to normal. She pretends they never made out and he accepts this because who’s gonna believe him anyway? His best hope for love and whatever is in college, not in this God-forsaken place, where they’ve already been the butt of a terrible joke.

But after he grabs his backpack and locks his car doors, she tucks her hand in the crook of his elbow, ostensibly for balance on the icy ground. “I had a really nice time last night,” she says, to her feet.

“Me too,” Jae hears himself say. “We could, um, go again? If you want to, or whatever.”

He sees a blush spread across her cheeks, or maybe it’s just the cold. “Yeah, I do.”

end.


End file.
